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BYOD to school – why ever not? #EDUScotICT

BYOD = Bring Your Own Device.

I was very interested to read the following article http://www.scotsman.com/news/education/9000_computers_to_be_replaced_and_wifi_access_for_all_pupils_1_1930318 ( at Scotsman.com written by Gemma Fraser) which bears the news that Edinburgh City will be upgrading its computer stock but also and more interestingly installing WiFi access in its schools.

Gemma says

The improved technology will also allow pupils and teachers to get internet access through their own mobile phones and laptops at school.

I had been thinking about writing concerning  the availability of WiFi in Scottish schools.  This does seem to be a matter of concern as I have seen a number of Tweets on the subject of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and these comments have been made by both teachers and Council IT support staff.

Pupils who introduced some of the speakers at the ICT Summit on the 17th October ( see here ) had made a parallel between schools and other public places like Costa Coffee and MacDonalds.  It seems that these young people will take advantage of free WiFi connections when drinking coffee and eating burgers allowing them to maintain their online presence.  But not so in schools where in in many cases there are rules banning the use of mobile devices and very often there is no WiFi coverage in any case.

As society is becoming ever more connected there is a is increasing pressure of opinion to support the concept of 24/7 presence even during the school day and on school premises.

It can be argued that there are some advantages in terms of benefit to a pupils education to them being always connected.  I can recall about 5 years ago visiting the Education depart of the Council featured in the article above and discussing their own vision of supporting the use of mobile devices to access Education resources.  That was early days and the availability of mobile devices was not as pervasive as is the case today – but it is good to reflect and recognize the foresight of those concerned.

Of course to have effective access to any online resource on a small form factor device may require special provision at the user interface level.  We are now very well used to having an “app for everything” which exposes the underlying functionality in the best possible manner with consideration of screen size and mode of interaction.

I am now making the bold assumption that it is both desirable and feasible to provide widespread access to wireless connectivity for school users in general.  With this set aside I will describe one approach to achieving the goal of universal wireless connectivity.

Has this been tried before?
As you might expect, this is a problem that has been recognised and overcome in other sectors of Education.  There are two extremes of approach to permitting connection to a public WiFi network as follows:

  • Allow any device to connect without applying any conditions
  • Require the user to authenticate so they can be identified and held responsible for adherence to a basic code of acceptable use.

Network administrator/owners would certainly want to have the ability to moderate or block users who abused the system.

With this basic requirement in mind the Higher Education community setup a solution for federated access to wireless networks.  The basic requirement is that a user who belonged to one University could visit another University and connect to their wireless LAN without the need to incur any additional user account administration.  This was set in place to address the prior position where a visitor needed to gain access to the visited network by registering for a visitor account.

Each user first needs to have a network access account with their home institution.  The system then allows the user to access another institutions LAN and the Internet by entering their home UID and PWD.  The process of authentication is transparent to the user as they will use the same method to authenticate regardless where they try to access the network.

The solution described (in very superficial terms ) above is called EDURoam.  A visit to the EduRoam site provides access to a complete description of how this works.

Here is my simple description of the user experience.

  • First the user signs up for an account for network access at his/her university/institutition.
  • The UID will be of the form – jimbuchan@myhomeinstutition.net (this is not an email address – rather a two part UID with the @ character separating the two parts – of course for convenience it would make sense to use the users full mail address)
  • There will be a password associated with this account  – these can be integrated into the home institutions local directory for access to other applications and services there.
  • When a user enters their UID the authentication system looks at the part after the @ character and that signifies where it need to send a request to authenticate the user.
  • The user is then authenticated against their home institution and assuming their UID and PWD are a valid pair, network access is granted.

The level of network access provided will permit the user access to the internet only (subject to the visited institutions access policy) – the user can then freely access the web and or setup a VPN to access protected services at their home institution.  Which is I think is precisely what user would expect.

The following video provides an excellent over view of the advantages of the EduRoam service

To read more about EduRoam vis the website at http://www.eduroam.org.uk

Why not implement a system following this approach for controlling access to wireless LANs in Scottish Schools?

Why not indeed?  In order to achieve a joined up solution for network access like this it will be necessary for any LA that wants to participate to firstly provide a wireless access capability and then to implement a federated access control system.  EduRoam is prime candidate for providing the federated access control needed to achieve this goal.

Alternatively, Scottish LAs could pursue localized and inconsistent approach – in favor of a more “joined up” and coordinated approach.

I would like to see Scotland adopting a scalable and consistent solution to this issue, that in my view, would offer most benefit to its end users!

6 thoughts on “BYOD to school – why ever not? #EDUScotICT”

  1. A very interesting blog post, describing an intriguing approach to school wifi. I must say that I am not entirely convinced that a system of wifi authentication which is integrated across the whole of Scotland, for education use, is necessarily the best approach. It may be equally or more valuable to ensure that local integration of management and provision of publicly provided wifi (in schools, hospitals, libraries, leisure centres, etc) is integrated so that citizens accessing local services do not suffer from numerous NATIONAL and inconsistent approaches!

    It seems to me that most local authorities are ideally placed to co-ordinate (and contribute as a partner to the funding of) such integrate local provision.

    It may be, of course, that with a bit of thought, imagination and commitment (and funding) from all partners, some of the best of both can be achieved (if affordable)!

  2. Not sure that I fully understand your concern here Sweyn.
    The basis of the system proposed here is fully managed by the Local Authority – but optionally and if only to be used for education users perhaps a national approach would be possible based around the Glow directory.
    There is no reason why such a system could not extended to include none educational users – the model is fully scalable.
    I think that its important that any system like this should be based on an existing directory of users which can support RADIUS for facilitation the federated authentication mechanism.
    Knowing a little about the history to cross LA initiatives or shared service I think that in order to have a good chance of success its best not to try and invent any new wheels here – that is my humble opinion.
    The idea of a national directory which is completely cross public sector is a great ideal – but again getting Health/Local Government/Education etc…… to join up to achieve this might be challenging! Remember the Broad Pathfinder project!

    Happy to discuss of course.

  3. We have all come a LONG way since the days of the Broadband Pathfinder projects in the Highlands and Islands, and the South of Scotland, I am pleased to say. Recent work done around the Public Sector Network intiative, may be deploying a more suitable scale of resource to solve some of the interoperability and security issues which doomed the original Scottish-Executive-led project in around 2004. Time will tell.

    I’m not sure what proportion of school-based users regularly need wifi facilities in schools in other LA areas, I imagine in the higher education sector the proportion is very high – which must mean that the national scheme is of great benefit in that sector. What I am certain of is that the vast majority of citizens (aged 3-113) who might need or want to make use of wifi in schools will also need or want to use wifi in libraries, leisure centres, museums, social care and other local-authority-run facilities in the same area, so I believe that the focus should be cross-sectoral intra-authority wifi provision rather than on one or more national sector-based provisions. In areas like Orkney with merged community health and social work/social care services, this may well (another difference since the far-off early days of Pathfinder) automatically include many health locations.

    If the McClelland process were to develop some standards for local authorities and national agencies to use to ensure interoperability of these local provisions (maybe EDU Roam is a candidate) that might also provide a way to cater for the needs of the far smaller (I imagine) proportion of citizens who may wish regularly to make use of facilities in other local authority areas (whether in schools or other sites).

    So I’m not sure yet whether I have concerns, or whether I am asking for a clearer focus on what the whole requirement is for wifi, from the point of view of the user. It may be (when all the sums are done by each authority, based on local priorities and timescales) that the approach you suggest would represent best value across the board: if so, no-one would be more delighted than I, as it would put schools where (in my opinion they should be) at the heart of their local communities, benefitting from, and contributing to, the infrastructure available to people in those communities.

  4. Last sentence should read “…. as it would put schools where (in my opinion) they should be – at the heart of their local communities benefitting from, and contributing to, the infrastructure available to people in those communities.”

  5. Interesting take on this topic from Gary Stager http://stager.tv/blog/?p=2397 worth a read – some challenging perspectived. We should not see BYOD as an “all or nothing provision” – it needs to be complementary to basic ICT provision made by the schools/LA/Governments. BYOD does make possible the use of devices which children and teachers own and use daily/hourly within the school context.

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